The Roads We Take
by JBA-007
Summary: The pages of our story might fade, the ink might smear and make the writing hard to read but it's just that, our story. It will forever live on in this book for generations to read in the future. Full summary inside!
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** The Roads We Take

**Couple**: Sam/Andy

**Rating:** T, might contain mild language and minor adult themes.

**Part:** 1 of 30

**Pages:** 4

**Spoilers:** All of season 1 and 2.

**Disclaimer:** hmm let me check all my ownership papers…. Nope rookie blue is not mine!

**Summary:** The pages of our story might fade, the ink might smear and make the writing hard to read but it's just that, our story. It will forever live on in this book for generations to read in the future. Our love is one of a kind, something nobody but us will ever understand fully, but this book will give them something to hold on to after we're long gone from this word. This is the epic love of McNally and Swarek.

**Authors Note 1: **Well here is the much promised new story I'm working on! Everything is outlined, but will take some time to type up because of school work load. Expect one maybe two updates a week for this story! I hope you all enjoy!

**Chapter 1: Prologue**

**Andy: **

Feeling the cold wind whip at my tender skin, I pull my jacket around me tighter. My old brittle bones feeling every ounce of cold, and every small movement I make. The arthritis makes me hurt, and nearly impossible to move during the cold, brutal, Toronto winters.

I divert my eyes away from the swaying trees and up towards the sky watching as it opens up to allow large, soft, snow flakes litter the ground. My water-filled brown eyes meet the dark wood box being held up with machinery until I'm ready for it to be lowered down into the ground, six feet down for the rest of eternity. I quickly move my eyes away from the casket that held the once beautiful life filled body of my husband.

The group of people has slowly dwindled down. Frank and Noelle left along with their two sons and daughter who were grown with families to tend to. After trying IVF, the couple was unable to have a child so they adopted their three children and have always been grateful to at least have children. I can't remember a time Frank and Noelle didn't have their children with them. Those kids were their life, as was their grandchild now. The Best clan was a beautifully unique family.

After watching the Best family leave soon after laying roses on the casket covered in a Toronto flag, I turn my gaze towards the group of people who were my fellow rookies. Dov and Gail got married first out of all of us, and now had a single son who was in law school, following the dream Dov gave up after his brother's suicide.

Chris married a nice female cop out of the 27th division named Elizabeth. I remembered her from the academy. She and Chris always had a connection unlike anything I have ever found until I met my husband. After meeting up again at the Black Penny, they took things slow and were the last to marry. The Diaz family has three incredibly beautiful girls all of which became cops and married cops, keeping the family tradition alive. They also had a son who is married to my only daughter. There are four grandchildren already and the oldest daughter was due any moment with her second son.

I see the Diaz family starting to make movements to leave and I sigh. I knew this day was coming, I just accepted I would go first not my strong husband who had always been there for me. His death was unexpected and I've never been the same since. I was just counting the days until I would once again be in his arms, up in the sky over looking our family and friends.

Breaking my gaze at the now snow covered ground, I see Jerry hugging Traci. Those two had a tumultuous relationship but eventually pulled it together. Jerry adopted Leo and the family would go on to add a little girl to the bunch a few years into their marriage. The little girl was my goddaughter, and I loved her as if she was my own blood.

Traci comes over and hugs me. I try to give her smile and my goddaughter, Michelle, gives me a big hug as they leave the funeral ready to go home and warm up. As I watch the small family leave, my eyes land on two familiar headstones. Just a few years ago, Zoey Shaw gave into a brain tumor, leaving her three daughters without a mom and Oliver without his other half. Oliver never was the same after that.

The second headstone was placed next to Zoey's a few months ago. Oliver joined his wife once again, after six years of being apart. I see the Shaw girls and their families standing at their parent's graves. I wish I could go over and hug them but even standing would take a few moments and by that time the moment would be gone.

My eyes turn away from the Shaw girls and lands back on the dark colored casket. The tears haven't stopped since he passed away. He was my everything, my life, my world. I didn't know how I was going to live without him. I knew it wouldn't be long before I rejoined my husband; we never were able to be apart for very long.

I feel a hand land on my shoulder softly and look up into the dark brown eyes of my oldest son, Junior. His wife Natalie was the youngest Shaw daughter. They married a few years ago and have two daughters, who were in their early teens now. Both Junior and Natalie are cops working out of the 15th division rising up fast in the ranks of police work.

Behind Junior was his twin brother Gabriel, who was unmarried and detective for the 17th division. He was a replica of his father is every single way. My youngest son, Jacob, was standing with Gabriel. Jacob had his arm wrapped tightly around his wife, Kristen and their son. Jacob was a doctor and Kristen was a stay at home mom.

I break my train of thoughts looking for my only daughter. I see her walking around the rows of chairs and comes to sit down next to me. She wraps her arms around me and I feel her crying. Isabella, Bell for short, was very close to her father, probably the closest out of all our children. I knew she would come to depend on Matt, her husband, along with being Chris and Elizabeth's youngest son, until she was over grieving for the loss of her father. Matt was standing off to the side trying to entertain the couple's two sons and two daughters. Something I remember hearing Isabella say not to long ago reminded her of the childhood she had. My husband was always very doting on his children, play dates out in freshly fallen snow, hockey matches and cheering on Bell at her soccer games were some of his favorite pass-times with the children. Those were moments we would never get back, long gone, but far from being forgotten, they were forever ingrained in my memory.

Junior's voice breaks into my sorrow induced coma,

"Mom, we should get you back the home. It's getting cold, and you need to rest this day has been long and hard."

I nod unable to find words for my son. I take one last look at the casket and glance at the head stone sitting at the top of the hole the casket was to be lowered into.

_Sam Swarek_

_Son, Brother, Father, Friend, Husband, Cop_

_Say not in grief: "He is no more", but live in thankfulness that he was_

_-Hebrew Proverb_

I rub my hand down my jacket and feel it land on something leathery. Looking down I see a leather bound book. I smile and rub my hand over the worn cover. This book would keep my company until it was my time to return to Sam's side. The book held all our precious memories, it was our story and once I passed on it would be given to our children who would keep Sam and I's love strong, keep it alive. It was our story, and it would forever live on in our children.

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**Authors note 2:** This chapter is really short because I just wanted to get in some background information before I really start the story. This will be fairly happy story, but as you can tell from this chapter death will be a part of the story, but it's a natural part of life. Most of the story will be told through multiple points of view all of which will be the Swarek children's.

**Author's note 3**: Up next is the first chapter which will explain a heck of a lot more than this did, so hang in there!

**Author's note 4**: Please review, they really do help me write these chapters faster. I'm more motivated and it keeps writers block away for me! I hope to get some great feedback from my readers so I'll know if I should continue this story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** The Roads We Take

**Couple**: Sam/Andy

**Rating:** T, might contain mild language and minor adult themes.

**Part:** 2 of 30

**Pages:** 7

**Spoilers:** All of season 1 and 2.

**Disclaimer:** hmm let me check all my ownership papers…. Nope rookie blue is not mine!

**Summary:** The pages of our story might fade, the ink might smear and make the writing hard to read but it's just that, our story. It will forever live on in this book for generations to read in the future. Our love is one of a kind, something nobody but us will ever understand fully, but this book will give them something to hold on to after we're long gone from this word. This is the epic love of McNally and Swarek.

**Authors Note 1:** Thank you all so much for the wonderful reviews! All the story favorites and favorite author alerts made my gloomy day so much better! You rock! I hope you all love this chapter! I really like how it turned out! Let me know what you think please! I am SO sorry for the long wait. Both my beta reader and I have been swamped with school work! Thank you for all hanging in I promise I will try to update more often hopefully it won't be two weeks in between anymore!

**Chapter 1**

**Isabella Swarek-Diaz**

Shutting the heavy oak door of my house after my husband and children walk through, I sink down onto the floor and pull my small legs up to my body, hugging my knees to my chest to let my sorrow fill me up and consume me inch by inch. It was a move I saw my mother do when I was younger after my father was injured and as well as when my grandfather Tommy passed away. I knew after my father died my mother would soon follow, but I didn't expect it to be just a short two months later. I had hoped she would make it through at least until next year, to let me get over the pain of losing my father, the man who meant the world to me. Now I was without two of the most important people to me.

Hearing heavy footsteps coming down the hall and stopping in front of me, I look up and into the eyes of my husband, Matt Diaz. I try to smile and he just gives me a knowing look and takes me into his arms. I cry into his strongly built chest and he tries to soothe me, but I know nothing will be able to heal the hole in my chest for many months if not years to come.

My mother was always the one I turned to when things got hard. If Matt and I had a fight, she was the first to know, when I thought I was pregnant for the first time; she was the one I went to. When I started to freak out about being a mom, she comforted me. She was always my guiding force and now that she's gone I don't know what I will do.

Pulling away from my husband, he sighs and helps me up. I walk away retreating towards our room. I knew I was pulling away from him; it was thing I inherited from my mother that I hated the most. Not bothering to pull my wet, melted snow covered jacket off, I climb into my bed. My snow boots were the only things I shed before climbing into my cold, made-up bed. I cover myself in the dark blue sheets hiding my swollen eyes and my running make up. Curling up in a ball, I shut my eyes and allow the pain to consume me, to take a hold of me, tightening its grasp on me pulling me towards the darkness. I allow it to consume me and pull every fiber of my being deeper in the darkness.

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Waking sometime later in the evening, I reach my hand out hoping to find the sheets on the bed occupied by the warm, toned body of my husband. When my hand comes into contact with the cold sheet, I sigh and move my hand around loving the feel of the softness running under my sensitive, lightly tanned fingertips.

Suddenly, my hand comes into contact with something that feels like leather. I open my eyes, and see the bed side lamp turned on. I squint in the light and divert my eyes towards the book my hand came into contact with. Seeing a red rose attached with a red ribbon, I knew my husband had to be the one to bring in this leather book. I find a note attached to the ribbon and read the messy scrawl of Matt's handwriting.

**Traci Barber brought this over. Said your mom told her to give it to you after the funeral right before she passed. Come downstairs when you're ready.**

**Love you**

I yank off the ribbon incasing the worn brown leather of the book and open the cover. Seeing my mom's handwriting, sends my tears cascading down my face again. I quickly reach over to my bedside and pull on my reading glasses preparing myself to read whatever this book contained.

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_Chapter 1: _

_By Andy Swarek_

_This book holds the story of Sam and Andy. A love that was passionate, fiery, and worth every single bit of trouble. It is all written down in this journal. I hope who ever reads this book finds that it gives you hope that love like this truly does exist because it does and shows itself when you least expect it to. _

_The first day Sam and I met was a hectic day. My first day on the job my first day as a rookie, I was paired with Oliver Shaw as my training officer. Pulling up to the rundown apartment complex, I hear Officer Shaw yell towards Traci, my fellow rookie and best friend who was riding with training Officer Noelle Williams, to start checking and clearing the house. _

_Busting open a door of an apartment, I see a beautiful man sitting on the window sill. Next to him was a drug addict who had the years of drug use written all over his face and clothing. I mean a Hawaiian shirt? Really? And to top it off a denim hat? He couldn't have been more obvious unless he was holding up a sign saying "I'm a crack addict!" _

_I knew fear was radiating through my voice as I screamed at the two men to put their hands up in the air. Seeing the handsome man bolt out the window, I start to chase him after the other suspect followed out the window right behind him. Running down the flight of stairs after the two men, one who fit the suspect profile we were looking for, I find both men hiding outside the building around a corner. _

_Patting myself on the back mentally, I speak into the radio, however that was rookie mistake number one, my radio was not turned on. Duhh McNally! Looking back on that moment, I feel stupid now but it sure did give Shaw a laugh for a few years. Only until the new batch of rookies came in did he forget about it, or so I think he forgot knowing him he kept it on file just in case._

_Anyway, finding the two suspects made me proud. I was a first day rookie and was about to make two arrests at once. Little did I know, one man I arrested would forever change my life, and give me the most wonderful life I could ever have imagined! And no, it wasn't Mr. Hawaiian shirt! _

_The tall, dark handsome suspect took off running as I was patting down the other suspect against the fence. I sigh and took off running. I see the man start fumbling over his own two feet and I internalize a laugh. He wasn't graceful that's for sure! _

_Tackling the fumbling man, I start patting him down. Something we seemed to disagree about for a long time afterwards. He claimed it was more like groping, I say I was just doing a thorough job. _

_I tell him to shut up as he kept on telling me he was on the job. Yea sure, on the job of dealing drugs that is. I may have been a rookie, but come on, I wasn't stupid. In reality, I really was that stupid, or just that naive._

_Bringing back the two men to Officer Shaw, I expected more praise for capturing the two men and bringing them in. Instead, I sensed he was surprised at my arrests. I shrugged it off thinking maybe he had never had such a good rookie before. Stepping into the booking room, I hear Detective Barber tell the dark handsome man "Hey Sammy you're back!" _

_In that single moment, I feel my stomach plummet realizing what the handsome man had been trying to tell me. He was on an undercover operation. I sigh and turn my head away in embarrassment, color flushing across my cheeks. _

_Shaw starts to un-cuff the man named Sammy. Looking up, I see the finally un-cuffed man glaring at me with his piercing dark brown eyes as he walked backwards anger radiating off him in huge, crashing waves. I look over to Shaw who just had a grin on his face shaking his head at my rookie mistake number two. _

"_What?" I ask him trying to play it cool._

"_Oh nothing McNally, just really good work out there! Not many of us could ruin an eight month undercover operation on our first day! That is some real copper talent you have there." _

_I cast my gaze towards my shiny, new boots and follow Shaw out towards the barn. That surely wasn't my first mistake and wouldn't be my last, but it was probably the one I am most thankful for in the long line of mistakes made over the years. What? I'm human. I make mistakes although Sam seems to think I'm more prone to them than any normal person. Sometimes I happen to agree with that statement._

_It brought me my husband, my children, and my whole entire future. Looking back on my first day, I knew it was fate. I might not have bought it was fate early on in our relationship, but now it knew it was. I was brought to the apartment complex to run into Sam Swarek because without that day who knows if I would have the life I do now. Who knows if I'd be writing this book, with Sam looking over my shoulder scoffing at my every word that I use this black ink pen to write. _

_I wouldn't change my first day for anything. It was the start of everything for me. The start of a new job, a new life, a new love, a love that would last a lifetime and well beyond life. It might have taken us a while to get here, but we made it through all the trials and tribulations never forgetting or letting our love die._

_I hope that you whoever is reading this book finds a love like that someday. Everyone deserves to know that kind of love. That kind of love that changes everything you thought you believed in even who you thought you were and what you wanted._

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Letting the soft ink filled page fall from my hand, I feel my body start shaking. I was still connected to my parents. This book was their story. I knew my parents had a unique type of love. When my friend's parents were yelling at one another all the time and divorcing, I would come home from school to find my parents dancing in the middle of the living room or them making out on the couch. I would constantly be at my grandfather Tommy's or Aunt Sarah's house because my parents wanted "date night". My family life was always stable, even if Mom and Dad were police officers. I knew no matter what, I would always have a home with both parents. I was very fortunate to grow up that way. If it wasn't one of those moments I walked in on, it normally meant they were at work or were just watching TV curled up against one another. It wasn't a normal day in the Swarek house if my parents weren't showing some kind of affection.

It repulsed me when I was little, but growing up I began to wish I would someday find that type of love. I knew even though my parents were gone from my life, from my world, they were in there own and that gave me hope. Hope that one day I would be there with Matt and would see them once again. Hope that they were together in the same place picking up right where they left off in that nursing home. Hope that forever and always really doesn't ever end.

Closing the worn cover of the book, I set the ink covered pages down my bedside table and will myself out of bed, moving my aching bones and muscles slowly trying to loosen the stiffness from sleeping in a curled up position. Taking off my winter jacket, I pull out an oversized sweatshirt of Matt's and slip off my dress off to pull on some of my favorite sweat pants and an oversized shirt.

Walking out of the bedroom, I see my children watching some movie. I kiss all four heads and hear the tones of them groaning at the "grossness of mom kisses". I sigh and shake my head. Sometimes I really do wonder about those four. They were more similar than they liked to admit something I took and catalogued to use for blackmail later on in life, jokingly of course, ok well maybe not totally joking! Asking them where their dad was I get answers of kitchen, food, who in the world knows and somewhere in the house all at once.

Heading towards the kitchen after processing the words thrown at me to answer my question, I see Matt's back towards me and I walk up behind him wrapping my arms around his waist. I lay my head against the soft red fabric of his long sleeved shirt covering the skin between his shoulder blades.

"Thank you." I mumble into his back.

"For what?" I hear him answer.

"For just being here for me, to get me through all this and everything that has happened over the crazy years of our life together. I never would have made it this far without you Matt."

"You don't have to thank me for that. I love you Bell nothing will change that."

"Hmmm….. love you to. So I started reading that book Traci dropped off that you put in our bed. Oh and thank you for the rose it's beautiful."

I pull away from his back and push myself up on the counter beside Matt watching him cook for our family. He was so sexy when he cooked. For a moment watching him cook made me forget about the crushing pain consuming my heart at my parents' death.

"What was the book about?" Matt asks me a few silent seconds later.

I feel myself start tearing up and use the oversized sleeve of the sweatshirt to wipe away the moisture leaking from my eyes, catching the falling make up as well in the process.

"It's written by my Mom and Dad. It's their love story."

Matt stops stirring the pot of soup he was cooking and looks over at me his eyes full of doubt. He drops the soup curses but continues on with his train of thought.

"You serious? Your dad didn't really seem like the type to put his feelings down on paper. Come to think of it, neither was your mom." Matt looks at me with incredulous eyes, questioning the reality of what I just told him about the book Traci dropped off.

"I know; that's what makes it so weird for me. I mean I always knew they loved one another but this book is like having a little piece of them with me."

Matt kisses me before answering again, "Are you going to tell your brothers?"

"I don't know. I guess I should. They may want to read it as well."

"Whatever you decide to do I'll support you know?"

"Yea I do. "

Matt turns his attention back towards the soup before shutting the stove off and calling out to the children that dinner was ready. All through dinner my family talks about my parents. The kids open up and allow there emotion to flow out finally. I had been trying to let them know it was ok and that I was sad and they shouldn't feel guilty if they felt they same. The dinner was a healing moment for us as a family. I was finally able to process my mother and father's death I was on my way to healing, because I had a little piece of them with me both running through my veins and sitting on my black nightstand in my bedroom. I smile and glance over my husband who winks at me as I smile back to him. He was my "Sam Swarek"; my forever true love that I hoped one day could be as epic and wonderful as my parents' story was and still is.

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**Author's Note 2:** I think these chapters will range in length but of the most part will be on the shorter side. It might allow me to update faster if they are shorter. As we progress through the story it's going to be journey of two different worlds. We are going to get Isabella's life and her working through grieving the loss of both parents and also the love story between Andy and Sam. Mostly the love story though!

**Author's Note 3:** Up next we dive a little deeper into the love book. Sam and Andy get assigned as partners, which may or may not turn out as well as it did on the show… wink wink! Things after this chapter will hold less and less resemblances to the show and more creativity on my part for the story line.

**Author's Note 4:** I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! Feedback is welcome I would love hear everyone's thoughts on the story good and bad as long as the bad is constructive and not just mean! If there is something you really want to see tell me and I'll see if I can work it in the story! Reviews are loved they are like a potato chip you can't just eat one! :D Once again thank you for all your wonderful reviews!


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